China's "Dad Brands" Are Closing Stores and Buying Western Outdoor Labels to Survive
For twenty years they dressed every Chinese man who wanted to look successful.
Youngor (雅戈尔). HLA (海澜之家). Septwolves (七匹狼). Joeone (九牧王). Suits, shirts, trousers. Wedding outfits, job interviews, office life.
Then young men stopped wanting to look successful. They wanted to look like they had just come down off a mountain.
Chinese media now call these companies 爸爸品牌, baba pinpai. Dad brands. And they are all doing the same thing at the same time, which is heading for the hills.
A report from Meicai (每财网), published October 8 and carried by Sina Finance, lays out how quickly the old model is cracking and how much money is now flowing toward Western outdoor and heritage names.
The store count tells the story
The closures, all from that report:
Septwolves: net 98 stores closed in 2025, then 82 more in the first half of 2026
HLA main brand: net 110 stores closed in H1 2026, putting it back where it stood three years ago
Joeone: down 32 stores in H1
Hodo (红豆股份): down 71 stores in H1
Baoxiniao (报喜鸟): down 6 stores in H1
The inventory position is uglier. The report says many of these companies are running inventory turnover above 200 days. A shirt sits for more than six months before anyone buys it.
Youngor shows the same problem from a different direction. It made over 2.1 billion yuan in H1 2026, and more than 85% of that profit came from investments. The fashion business turned over 3.249 billion yuan, down 1.46%.
One industry figure quoted in the report put it plainly: traditional menswear brands have been looking for a breakthrough and have not found a good path.
The shopping list
So what are they buying?
Baoxiniao picked up the brand IP for Woolrich, the American outdoor label founded in 1830, for markets outside Europe. Price: 384 million yuan.
Biem.L.Fdlkk (比音勒芬) took full-category China rights to Japanese camping brand Snow Peak in June 2026 and built a business unit around it. It also holds the global trademarks for CERRUTI 1881 and KENT&CURWEN.
Youngor bought French kidswear label Bonpoint, took 40% of US streetwear brand UNDEFEATED, invested in Alexander Wang and set up a joint venture with Helly Hansen for premium outdoor.
HLA bought the China trademark for Italian equestrian brand Cavalleria Toscana. Its subsidiary also runs adidas FCC retail on the mainland, with 723 stores at the end of June 2026.
Baoxiniao has also distributed French outdoor brand Aigle (乐飞叶) for years.
The pattern is hard to miss. These groups know how to run stores, factories and supply chains. What they do not have is a story young Chinese men believe. So they are buying stories.
Some of it works. Some of it really doesn't.
On paper the winners look strong.
Biem.L.Fdlkk did 2.601 billion yuan in H1, up 23.66%, at a 75.88% gross margin, with online revenue up 101.93%. Baoxiniao did 2.629 billion yuan, up 9.96%, with net profit up 47.71% to 291 million. HAZZYS, inside the Baoxiniao portfolio, grew 13.18% to 1.054 billion. Aigle grew 15% to 210 million.
The prize they are all chasing: Descente China passed 10 billion yuan in annual sales in 2025. More than 400 million people in China now take part in outdoor sports, with 25 to 34 year olds the largest group, according to a national sports report cited in the article.
Then there are the failures, and they are more useful than the wins.
HLA launched its own trail running brand, HLA POW (澜跑), in 2025. The report found its Taobao flagship with fewer than 10,000 followers. Its JD store, opened in August, had fewer than 600. No physical stores yet.
Think about what that means. HLA has thousands of doors and serious money. It built a running brand from scratch and almost nobody showed up.
CERRUTI 1881 and KENT&CURWEN went the other way. The report says the operating companies lost money year after year, the acquisition fund was dissolved, and the brands were folded into the listed company to cut costs.
Buying a Western brand is not the hard part. Running one in China is the entire job.
Why this matters if you own one of these brands
That shopping list is also a buyers list.
These groups have cash, national store networks and one specific problem they cannot solve with either. Their own brands feel old, and the thing they need is the thing HLA just proved money cannot manufacture.
That is worth understanding before you walk into a meeting. Most Western brands approach a Chinese partner from a position of need, because the partner has the distribution. Look at HLA POW and the position reverses. Distribution is purchasable. A reason for a 28-year-old in Chengdu to care is not.
The report's own summary of why the giants are climbing: not because they have found a sure answer, but because staying where they are is more dangerous.
Four things to do this week
Ask for inventory turnover, by brand, and treat 200 days as a warning.
Many of these companies are running above 200 days on their own product. If a partner takes six months to shift a shirt they designed, chose the fabric for and own the margin on, work out what happens to yours sitting next to it.
Ask for the number brand by brand rather than company-wide. The average hides the problem, and the gap between their best brand and their worst tells you how much attention a new one gets.
Find out whether you are talking to an operator or an investor.
Youngor made over 2.1 billion yuan in H1 with more than 85% of it from investments, while its fashion revenue fell. An investment house with a clothing business attached will treat your brand like a position rather than a product.
Neither is wrong, but they want different things and they measure you differently. An operator wants sell-through and will fight for shelf space. An investor wants the asset to appreciate and may be content to let it sit. Find out which conversation you are in before you agree to anything.
Ask how their last acquisition is doing three years in, then go and find the people who ran it.
Biem.L.Fdlkk with Snow Peak and Baoxiniao with HAZZYS look nothing like the CERRUTI 1881 story, and all of them are on the same kind of press release.
Current revenue tells you about the market. Year three tells you about the partner. And the team that ran the brand that failed still exists, still has opinions, and will usually take your call.
Work out which gap you fill in each portfolio, then price accordingly.
Mapping who owns what is the easy half. The question that matters is what is missing. A group that already has Snow Peak does not need another camping brand. A group with nothing in technical outerwear and a store network full of suits has a hole shaped like you.
Know which hole you fill before the first meeting. Your leverage sits there, not in your revenue line.
